Note 146 — Chapter I · HEBREW WISDOM, ITS NATURE, SCOPE, AND IMPORTANCE.

Luzzatto renders, ‘o voi uomini insipienti, poeti di questo popolo,’ taking mōshēlīm in the same sense as in Num. xxi. 27 (similarly Barth, in his tract on Isaiah, p. 23, following Rashi and Aben Ezra), a view which receives some support from the parable offered by Isaiah in xxviii. 23-29 as if in opposition to the false parables of unsound teachers. But in Isa. xxix. 20 ‘scorner’ is clearly used, not as a class-name for certain wise men, but in a moral sense.